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When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

hiringengineersbook.com

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Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#341

Post by pdxww »

techslave wrote: post #197
josh2600 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add some thoughts here: I’ve interviewed people who were google L7+ (IC) a couple of times who weren’t very good engineers, at least on the work sample stuff. I’ve found that the highest correlation to performance in senior engineers is raw algorithmic skill and willingness to say “I don’t know” when you don’t know. This is not true of hiring devops or sre’s. For those positions, you want the gopher archetype…

i dunno. the machine has beaten me more more times than i care to admit. some problems are hard. i’m L7.

Honestly speaking, since it's an anonymous forum, what's the difference between L5 and L7? Like if I was asked the same question - the difference between L3 and L5 - I'd say that it's just experience with a few interesting known projects that's paid so much better, while the cognitive ability is the same.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#342

Post by justin_evans »

Every business owner should know their mistakes in staff augmentation and what they should do to retain their new hires. You may not be aware of it, but you may be committing some serious onboarding mistakes for new hires that are driving your new hires away. I have found an article it might have the perfact answer to the question https://mobinspire.com/blogs/top-onboarding-mistakes-leading...

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#343

Post by twblalock »

humanrebar wrote: post #231
EpicEng wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So buy a bunch of property so you can walk a straight line or... don't walk. This is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read here.

Huh? I was saying a FAANG salary in Columbus Ohio (for exame) probably buys you a car free lifestyle with the style of home you want, especially if you have a working spouse.

Most Silicon Valley companies, including FAANGs, pay less to people outside the Bay Area. Some of them have an official HR policy of doing so and have standardized the salary adjustments for the other cities where they have offices.

Even if you are already at a FAANG in Silicon Valley, you will likely get your salary adjusted down by the standard amount if you move somewhere else. You'd actually have more luck avoiding a pay cut at a startup because they almost always have less rigorous HR policies than FAANGs.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#344

Post by droithomme »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #282
verelo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of agree and kind of dont. I have a super simple inital question I always ask in interviews: Write me a function, in any language, that takes an array (or list) of integers and returns the sum. 90% of people that can do that are decent, and sadly i'd have to say i'm shocked by how many people struggle with this question, or the follow up of "ok interesting implementation, now what can go wrong at runtime?" It'…

> 90% of people that can do that are decent I can't imagine this being an effective qualifier for any but the most junior of devs.

It's a highly effective and quick disqualifier.

100% of those that couldn't do it are not qualified candidates.

Some of those that could do it are good candidates.

When you bring in someone that has a nice looking CV and experience and recommendations and you ask them a very basic question and they can't respond at all, it is a safe disqualifier. It also doesn't take six hours.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#345

Post by pushrax »

dmichulke wrote: post #329
josh2600 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add some thoughts here: I’ve interviewed people who were google L7+ (IC) a couple of times who weren’t very good engineers, at least on the work sample stuff. I’ve found that the highest correlation to performance in senior engineers is raw algorithmic skill and willingness to say “I don’t know” when you don’t know. This is not true of hiring devops or sre’s. For those positions, you want the gopher archetype…

Unfortunately, often (and maybe more so because I live in Europe) it's also the other way round: > raw algorithmic skill It's been ages that I've been asked anything remotely algorithmic. My interviews are mostly about frameworks, how you fit in a team and whether you know / can be "agile". Not even a Fizzbuzz, much less so quicksort or more special algorithms. > and willingness to say “I don’t know” That never got m…

It really depends on your domain. If you're into low level hacking and distributed systems, there is a lot more algorithmic work. There is demand for software that's cheap to scale and/or low latency. Some fields are bottlenecked by hardware (machine learning, realtime rendering, etc.) and so benefit from better software. Some production systems still need a large amount of optimization to satisfy economic and product constraints.

I don't think the number of jobs requiring fairly deep systems or algorithmic knowledge has gone down, but the ratio has.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#346

Post by burlesona »

masonic wrote: post #232
crazygringo wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So where is it? Where can you live outside of SF that you don't need a car and can live a normal adult lifestyle?

First of all, SF doesn't really qualify. How many live in a neighborhood where their workplace, medical, grocery, and social needs are all walkable to/from? Car-ownership-hostile != "walkable". Using Lyft/Uber isn't "walking". Anyway, as to your question: parts of Sacramento, Auburn, Carson City, Eugene, Bend, and Boise all qualify, and that'slimiting to cities I know firsthand. Other cities that I hear this from oth…

I think your bar for walkable is lower than mine. Yes there are other places where you can take a nice walk, but I’m talking about living without caring or noticing that you haven’t driven a car in weeks.

Things that I do within two blocks of the flat I live in:

- get groceries

- go to a bakery

- go to one of three coffee shops

- go to one of ten or so restaurants

- go to a comic book store

- go to a game store

- go to a pub

- get my hair cut

- go to the dentist

My two kids, both under school age, at this point can safely walk with me to any of these activities, and, except for the dentist, they often do and quite enjoy it.

I could walk a bit further, but usually bike, and occasionally take transit, to my office, and to literally everything else in my life except the following:

- Trips out of town

- An occasional visit to a Lowes on the other side of town

That’s the bar I’m aiming for.

Note 1, I’m not talking about Manhattan. There’s almost nothing over three stories for several dozen blocks around me, this is all just really ordinary small/medium scale stuff from circa 1900.

And note 2, you asked how many people “really live like that,” and as best I can tell in San Francisco the answer is somewhere between 50 and 90% of the ~million residents. (I don’t know how good every neighborhood is, and I think some are less convenient than mine, but mine is pretty ordinary for SF.)

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#347

Post by ummonk »

dleslie wrote: post #47
nicoburns wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best interview I ever had was a 2-hour onsite work sample, followed by 1/2 an hour discussing what I'd come up with. I was offered the job the next day. Surely most people would prefer this to whiteboard tasks?

The best interview I had was a few hours of friendly conversation about the details of my resume. Then I was hired under probation, as everyone there was, and the understanding was that I could be easily dismissed if it was clear that I wasn't working out.

There is no way in hell I'd ever sign up for that. To be expected to quit your current job on the hope that the probationary period works out is insane.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#348

Post by mancerayder »

Aeolun wrote: post #114
notjesse wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it’s not generally tolerated. You end up optimizing for sub-prime candidates because those are the only ones desperate enough to take 4-6 hours out of their free time for a company that hasn’t even bothered interviewing you, yet. If they want to turn the onsite into one big work sample, by all means, that sounds very effective (and something I’ve seen work well). But in my experience, you’re going to deter qualif…

Hah, I had a sample test that I had to do after first being met on-site, which I thought was great. Then they said my work sample was amazing, and they’d like to do an on-site Q&A about it, but when I arrived the engineer hadn’t even seen my work, and proceeded to just quiz me on obscure JS trivia. Which I promptly failed. They then rejected me even though they were happy about my work :/

That sounds like disorganization and poor internal communication, two traits of the organization probably not just evident in their evaluation of you. You may have dodged a bullet.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#349

Post by gregrata »

sethammons wrote: post #154
tptacek wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if you're saying "look at their resume and see if they've successfully worked on teams for extended periods of time" (don't do this; it's a debacle of a signal) or "hire them if you yourself have worked with them before" (this works fine but network hiring can lead to brittle teams that fall apart as soon as 1-2 people move on).

I read it as someone already with the company has prior work with the candidate and wants to work with them again.

Correct. Best way to know what someone is going to be like to work with, and how good they are, is to work with them. Interview is that helpful

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#350

Post by gregrata »

tptacek wrote: post #24
gregrata wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because someone knows someone and has worked with them for a long time only And this is the #1 thing that gets a near auto-hire from me. I'm not saying don't interview them, but most interviews don't really tell you what it's going to be like working with someone. On the other hand, WORKING with someone (for a long time) 100% tells you what it's like working with someone. If someone has worked a long time with some…

I can't tell if you're saying "look at their resume and see if they've successfully worked on teams for extended periods of time" (don't do this; it's a debacle of a signal) or "hire them if you yourself have worked with them before" (this works fine but network hiring can lead to brittle teams that fall apart as soon as 1-2 people move on).

> WORKING with someone (for a long time) 100% tells you what it's like working with someone

Not sure how that's not clear...

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